ABC
United States
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sept 21, 2017
An annual beer festival in Kuala Lumpur has been axed due to information that militants were planning to sabotage the event, police said Thursday.
The Kuala Lumpur City Hall on Monday banned the “Better Beer Festival,” scheduled for Oct. 6-7 in a shopping mall, without giving any reasons. It followed protests from an Islamist party that called it a vice festival that could lead to criminal acts, rape and free sex.
The festival, which features craft beers from 43 breweries worldwide, has been held in Malaysia annually since 2012. The cancellation has angered many Malaysians, who slammed it as a sign of growing Islamization in the country.
National police chief Mohamad Fuzi Harun said police have information that unidentified militants were planning to sabotage the event because it was deemed to be against their struggle. He said that several other parties, which he didn’t name, were also planning to create chaos at the festival.
“To avoid any incident beyond our control, police have to be proactive by objecting to the organizing of the festival in order to ensure public safety and security,” he said in a brief statement.
In a separate statement earlier Thursday, Fuzi said police had detained 41 foreign militant suspects this year alone. Since 2013, police in Malaysia have detained more than 300 people believed to be linked to the Islamic State group.
Opposition lawmaker Lim Kit Siang said many Malaysians viewed Fuzi’s statement with a pinch of salt and wondered if police were dragged into partisan politics. If the police intelligence is true, Lim said a ban on the event is not the answer as it would reflect poorly on police professionalism.
“If the Malaysian police cannot even handle a security or terrorist threat to the ‘Better Beer Festival,’ which would be held in a very localized and easily protected area, Malaysians would be entitled to ask how could the police face a major or full-scale terrorist threat,” Lim said in a statement.
#1 by good coolie on Saturday, 23 September 2017 - 12:56 pm
Okay, the IS fellows planning to attack beer drinkers have been very neatly arrested (undilah BN!). So, don’t you think the large scale beer drinking can now go on? On behalf of the beer drinkers, I promise they won’t drink-drive. By the way, beer drinking is not at all maksiat to a large section of the population of Tanah Tumpah Darah Ku.
Don’t listen to PAS. Statistics show that there is widespread unholy misery in the backward state of Kelantan. PAS should heal moral maladies in Kelantan first, then preach petty restrictions to the other states.
#2 by Bigjoe on Monday, 25 September 2017 - 7:42 am
This started out as about the another push by Islamist particular Hadi’s PAS looking for political capital against the country’s secular founding and the usual argument about public space and personal rights BUT instead because Hadi’s PAS in fact lying about their political actions and agenda, its now fact, with this case, Islamisation is LYING to achieve its ends.
Islamic statism is in fact proving no different than any autocratic regime and unreliable from corruption and abuse of power.
Admist all this, there is again argument that Malaysia is not a secular state, the basis of that argument that religion and Islam is mentioned in the Constitution and that it does not explicitly say its religion, particularly Islam is not part of it.
How long must we go on to to explain that secularity does not mean no religion? How many more times must be explained that secularity and complete separation of religion and state is two different doctrine?
Secularity just means of this world, meaning that it INCLUDES RELIGION – just that religion is governed NOT to be governed. Secularity does not mean godless, just that its place in state is not pinnacle, in fact subsumed to the our faculties i.e., the buck stops with us not to religion.